Consultation with a Vampire - 01 (10 page)

“Topper,” Edwin said.
 

“If you think I’m going to sit by and watch my best friend and most lucrative client be torn to shreds by bloodsucking, eyeliner-wearing VAMPIRES–”

“Topper.”

“Yeah?”

“Enough.”

If DeChevue and Madeleine were surprised to find the reception area empty, they did not show it. They glided like shadows into the underground chamber where Edwin was waiting. This time, the room was much darker, the primary illumination coming from candles that had been placed on various small tables and in wrought-iron stands.
 

Edwin waited in an overstuffed chair, elbows on the armrests and fingertips touching in front of his chest. The soft light from the candles in front of him made him seem illuminated from within.
 

“Bravo, M’sieur Windsor. You have developed a sense of occasion,” DeChevue said, lightly clapping his lace-gloved hands. Madeleine said nothing. She just stared at Edwin intensely.
 

“Please be seated, and we will begin,” Edwin said.

As they sat down, the door to the chamber dilated closed with a hissing sound.

DeChevue smiled. “Now, how will you escape if this meeting goes badly? I am amiable enough, but I think you will find that Madeleine will be rather difficult to entertain this evening. Hell hath no fury?”
 

“Nothing so melodramatic, I’m afraid. With the door closed, we have an absolutely soundproof chamber. And, for this presentation, privacy is of the utmost concern.”

“My! Do you hear that, my dear?” DeChevue asked with a predator’s smile. “We require privacy. It seems we are in for a bit of excitement.” Madeleine’s eyes did not change, nor did they move from Edwin. In the low light, they resembled the dead eyes of a shark.
 

“My plan for you,” said Edwin, even as he felt it was a stretch to use the word “plan” to a set of ideas that had powered the world of commerce since the marketplaces of Ancient Babylon, “is remarkably simple. Instead of chasing down your breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I suggest that you do what everyone else does.”

“But M’sieur, we are not like everyone else. Clearly, we are vampires.”
 

“Yes, yes. You are bright, unique snowflakes,” Edwin said dismissively, “but in some things, you are not unique.”

“Your arrogance leads you into error,” DeChevue protested.

“If I had made such an error, it would mean only that I had been following your example. You have retained me to advise you. This is correct?” Edwin waited for what seemed like an eternity. For all of DeChevue’s talk of patience being beyond the ken of mortals, the silence obviously made him uncomfortable.
 

Finally, he answered Edwin. “Yes. Proceed.”

“Very well. You need blood? This is a need for sustenance no different from a need for ham or milk or bread. You should simply buy blood.”

Anger flashed across DeChevue’s face. He tried to disguise it by raking his hair backwards out of his face. Why did this man, this mere human, upset him so? “In my experience, people are reluctant to part with their blood.”

“Nonsense,” Edwin said. “People are not willing to part with their lives. People are not willing to have you slobbering at their necks, but parting with blood?” On the screen behind Edwin a single image appeared. It showed a large tour bus that had been converted to specialty use. A line of people waiting to get into the vehicle stretched out of the frame. On the side of the vehicle was a large red cross and a “Bloodmobile” sign.

“Non! NON! M’sieur, have you not understood anything I have said? We are savage creatures. Too fierce for the daylight. We cannot become, this, this – what do you say, blood farmers? By my honor. By my panache! I cannot give up the thrill of the hunt.”

Edwin rubbed his eyes and summoned his last reserves of patience. “Your problems and the problems of your kind are all self-created.”

“You would ask the lion to lay down with the lamb? It is not the way of things. I thought you were supposed to be an intelligent man. I see you do not understand the first thing about vampires.”

Edwin sighed. “I see that I have overestimated your capacity for logic.”
   

“Au contraire. You have underestimated my most important capacity. You call yourself an Evil Efficiency Consultant, but you understand Evil not at all. Only academically. You see, I am a vampire of the oldest line. The treachery of centuries runs through my veins. Yes, we will take your idea. We will use your idea, but still we will hunt. We will make them fear us again. So what if they have cameras? We will kill more and more, and swell our numbers. As payment for your services, I give you not Life Eternal but only Death!” DeChevue hissed and raised his arms dramatically.
 

“Ah, your inevitable betrayal...” Edwin said. “If only I had been able see it coming.”

“Of course you did not,” DeChevue countered, missing the irony completely. He flipped his hair from his face dramatically and said, “You were too blinded by the prospect of Life Eternal.”

“Life Interminable,” Edwin’s mind corrected once again. He really did need to get control of his thoughts. No good could come of having them run wild like that.
 

“For you, Windsor, in all your arrogance, the only reward is that to which all flesh is heir: Death. DEATH! DEAAAAATH!” Laughing maniacally, DeChevue was so consumed by blood lust that he didn’t notice that Edwin’s expression had not changed. Of course, Edwin could have been paralyzed with fear. But usually, when a person is terrified, paralyzed in terror, or otherwise, his face constricts into some kind of rictus. Edwin was not only immobile but serene.

DeChevue advanced upon Edwin with hands contorted into claws of unreasonably melodramatic fury.
 

“MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!” DeChevue laughed wildly as his teeth snapped into place in preparation to rip out Edwin’s throat.
 

“STOP!” cried Madeleine as she threw herself into DeChevue’s murderous path.

The pale man’s laughter died in his throat. “What do you think you are doing? How dare you! I am your maker and have been your master these many years.”

“C’est terminé,” Madeleine cried, blocking DeChevue’s advance.
 

This is unexpected, Edwin thought.
 

“You cannot harm him,” Madeleine cried, spreading out her arms to protect Edwin. “I love him, even though he does not love me back.”

“But come now,” DeChevue said, twisting his anger into a false smile. “He is... is... like a housefly. Living so little and so poorly. How could you?”

“A moment with him,” she said, her eyes full with tears of love (and, it is painful to report faithfully, blood), “is far better than an eternity with you.”

“But, but, you can’t be serious,” DeChevue said, making the fatal error of trying to reason with a woman in love.
 

She nodded. Slowly at first, and then faster. Her nod was an affirmation of all life, of all things transitory. Somehow, such things were made more important by the fact they were so fleeting. And she knew, for the first time, that something in her shadowy world was real because it entailed a sacrifice.
 

DeChevue sighed in a way that only a Frenchman dealing with love can. “If this is the way you truly feel...”

“It is. Oh, Monsieur, it IS!”
 

The vampire nodded acceptingly. Then he backhanded Madeleine across the room and into the rounded side of the chamber. His path to Edwin was now clear. Yet Edwin did not flee. He just sat there, looking at DeChevue with mild contempt. How smart could he really be? DeChevue wondered. How could he not run when certain death was upon him? Was there no life in him? Who was the bloodless one here, after all?

DeChevue lunged, teeth first, at Edwin’s neck. He expected hysterical shrieking. He expected the tearing of warm flesh and the spurting of blood down his throat, which would fill him with power and life once again. So when he wound up with a mouthful of upholstery, he was surprised, to say the least.
 

Madeleine had dragged herself to a sitting position. She too
 
was shocked to see her master and maker, the most powerful vampire she had ever known, with his face buried in an overstuffed leather chair and his torso sticking through a remarkably high-quality hologram of Edwin Windsor.
 

Edwin looked down at the vampire that protruded through his virtual torso and said, “For all your arrogance, it comes down to a simple failure to evolve.”

 
“I do not understand,” Madeleine said.

“Is it magic?” DeChevue asked, standing up and clawing upholstery out of his fangs.
 

“Any technology, sufficiently advanced, will appear to be magic. You have simply been outstripped by evolution.”

“I will find you, Windsor. I will kill you.”

“Consider the problem from a resource perspective. Human beings are adapted to a variety of foodstuffs and environments.”

“But we rule the night,” DeChevue said.

“Perhaps before the advent of flashlights and night vision, but I am afraid that you are simply obsolete.”

“Obsolete! We are eternal,” Madeleine protested.

“Let us put that to the test,” Edwin said. Then he disappeared.
 

DeChevue screamed at the ceiling, “WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINDSOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!” It was very dramatic, but as the ceiling was an inanimate object, it was not impressed or scared.
 

For a moment, DeChevue didn’t know what to do. He looked at Madeleine. She looked back.

“What now?” she asked.
 

“Eh,” he said with a shrug. “Now we go kill him.” But before they could take as much as a step towards the door, there was a loud boom.
 

During construction, Edwin had seen fit to include a number of explosive charges along the roof of the extruded polymer bubble. Unlike a self-destruct mechanism, these charges were not directed downward. It is unreasonably difficult to compress a sphere with explosives, as anyone who has designed a detonator for an atomic bomb will tell you. Instead, these charges were directed upward. And when they were detonated, they hurled several tons of earth (and at least one ton of unsightly fountain/reflecting pool/koi pond) into the sky.
 

The top half of the sphere in which DeChevue and Madeleine were trapped now protruded from the center of a large crater. They were horrified to see a clear night above them and hints of dawn in the visible in the east.
 

With superhuman strength, DeChevue clawed at the door to the lobby. But it didn’t budge. He kicked it and only succeeded in knocking himself backwards. Then, he got a running start and charged it with his shoulder. He was stopped dead and was treated to a crunch that was the sound a shoulder made when a little too much superhuman strength was focused into it.
 

Exhausted, panting, and in pain, he threw himself down on the sofa. Madeleine asked, “Is there nothing we can do?” The only answer she got was more panting. She sat herself on the back of the couch and ran her fingers through DeChevue’s long hair in an attempt to comfort him. After the moaning and the cursing subsided, she said, “Well, at least we will get to see the sunrise.”

“Oh, shut up,” DeChevue said.
 

From the great height of his office, Edwin looked down upon the crater that had replaced the uninspired reflecting pool. In the background, the technician was disassembling the holographic conference equipment. Topper waddled over and surveyed the damage. “Remind me never to back you into a corner,” Topper said.
 

“Is that the kind of thing you are likely to forget?” Edwin asked.

“No. I mean, NO. Geeze, I’m your buddy, your pal, your friend—even more important than that, I’m your lawyer. It’s a sacred trust, and you can always count on me.”
 

Edwin looked down at his small friend. “Topper, would you care to join me for a drink?”

“A drink? I mean you, and the drinking and the— Jesus, the sun isn’t even up yet. What is it, quarter after six?”

“If you don’t feel it appropriate.”

“Feel it appropriate? Are you kidding? I’m the guy with his picture on the bottle of Rise and Shine, the Breakfast Bourbon™. I am literally the Bruce Jenner of early-morning drinking.”

“I thought I might have a glass of champagne to celebrate.”

“To celebrate what? Not getting fanged to death?” Topper asked, truly confused.
 

“You really have missed most of this, haven’t you? No matter. Let us go outside and watch the sunrise.”
 

Edwin approached the edge of the crater with a bottle of 1928 Krug and three champagne glasses. “The custom is to open this with a cavalry saber.”

“I am so proud of you,” Topper said with tears in his eyes. “Busting up perfectly good bottles and solving problems with explosions. Pretty soon, you are going to be having fun like a normal person.”

Edwin ignored this and popped the cork with his hands. He held the bottle out over the edge of the crater so that champagne would not splatter on his shoes. Golden liquid pooled on one side of the bubble and soaked into the earth. Edwin could see DeChevue and Madeleine looking up at him from inside the bubble. “It’s the ’28,” Edwin shouted down. “Said to be the finest vintage ever produced.”
 

“Please, please!” DeChevue shouted. The carbon-fiber shell dampened his shout to barely more than a whisper.

“There’s nothing I can do,” Edwin said as he filled a glass. “You were simply born at the wrong time too enjoy this champagne.”

DeChevue got down on his knees and held up his hands imploringly.
 

“Monsieur,” Edwin said, “please preserve your dignity.” He handed a full glass to Topper and poured another.
 

“Edwin, I am surprised at you!” Agnes said, joining them at the edge of the pit. A scarf was tied around her head, and she was wrapped tightly in a coat to protect against the early spring chill. “I am shocked that you are wasting a ’28 Krug on this uncouth savage. This Philistine would be content drinking rubbing alcohol!”